soft-landv.
/ˌsɒf(t)ˈland/, U.S. /ˌsɔf(t)ˈlænd/, /ˌsɑf(t)ˈlænd/ Chiefly Astronautics.
1. transitive. To land (a craft, a payload, etc.) in a controlled manner so as to avoid serious damage. Cf. soft landing n. 1.
ΘΚΠ
society > travel > air or space travel > space flight > [verb (intransitive)] > land in specific manner
soft-land1958
splash1962
society > travel > air or space travel > space flight > [verb (transitive)] > land without damage
soft-land1958
1958 Washington Post 10 Aug. e3/2 Plans are already under way to design small tank-like vehicles to be soft-landed on the moon and which, under TV guidance from earth, will be directed over the moon's surface, sampling, analyzing, photographing.
1967 New Scientist 1 June 549/3 The balloon itself was constructed of fine polythene and helium-filled... It was soft-landed and recovered for further use.
1970 Guardian 21 Sept. 3/7 Russia today soft-landed its Luna 16 unmanned spacecraft on the moon's barren Sea of Fertility.
2002 Philadelphia Inquirer 22 Dec. d6 Chinese scientists plan to soft-land robot probes within the decade.
2. intransitive. To make a soft landing.
ΚΠ
1960 Waterloo (Iowa) Daily Courier 19 Apr. 4/6 Saturn will be able to soft-land on the moon.
1975 Times 7 Apr. 6/1 A manned Soyuz spacecraft..soft-landed southwest of the western Siberian town of Gorno-Altaysk.
2004 B. Bunch & A. Hellemans Hist. Sci. & Technol. 618/4 Mars 2..becomes the first space probe to soft-land on Mars.
Derivatives
soft-ˈlanded adj. (of a craft, payload, etc.) that has been soft-landed.
ΘΚΠ
society > travel > air or space travel > space flight > [adjective] > landed or landing without damage
soft1950
soft-landed1958
1958 Proc. Lunar & Planetary Explor. Colloquium 13/1 Would you..talk about the design and weight distribution of this soft-landed payload?
1971 Nature 26 Nov. 211/2 Such data will be of value in interpreting the findings of soft-landed spacecraft on other planets.
1991 D. T. Vaniman et al. in G. H. Heiken et al. Lunar Sourcebook ii. 7 (table) First soft-landed robot laboratory.
soft ˈlander n. a space vehicle capable of making a soft landing, typically through the inclusion of retrorockets or parachutes in its design.
ΘΚΠ
society > travel > air or space travel > a means of conveyance through the air > spacecraft > [noun] > which can land on a planet
soft lander1960
lander1961
1960 Electr. Engin. Space Technol. (Amer. Inst. Electr. Engineers) 5/2 A lunar hard-lander and a lunar soft-lander may use the same launch vehicle.
1977 A. Hallam Planet Earth 20/1 The surface panoramas transmitted back to Earth from the Soviet soft-landers Veneras 9 and 10 show a barren landscape that contains both angular and rounded rocks.
2011 S. Hubbard Exploring Mars viii. 105 We pointed out concepts for hard landers, semihard landers, and soft landers, such as those in the Viking style with retro rockets.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2016; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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v.1958